MILAN, SUMMER, 1987: THE HEROIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD Sandro Lago is a teenage junky exhausted and adrift in Milan's seedy underworld of the mid-1980s, on the run from a killer, cops, a Milanese mobster, and his own syringe-inspired demons. Robi Johnson, in Chicago, wants nothing more than a fleeting escape from a tortured past, and figures Italy is as good a place as anywhere else. As Sandro and Robi's lives collide in the vibrant and turbulent summer of 1987, they will find solace in each other's pain, a brief respite from their shattered lives, and a desperate escape from the violence that threatens to tear them apart. Written in 1987 and set in the dying days of ItaloDisco, "Francesca" is a gritty and unsparing novel that captures the fragility of youth and the harsh realities of life on the bitter-cut edge.